Chapter 346: You Want Her To Repair The Alliance With Dimitri

POV: CAMILLA

Camilla waited until morning.

She’d learned long ago that Lorenzo’s anger burned hottest at night and cooled by breakfast, that the man who raged in his study after midnight was rarely the same man who sat with his espresso at seven, already thinking about the day’s business instead of the previous night’s grievances.

She found him exactly where she expected, at the small table on the east terrace, papers spread in front of him, untouched coffee going cold at his elbow.

"You didn’t sleep," she said, settling into the chair across from him.

"I had calls to make," Lorenzo said, not looking up. "Antonio wanted an update on the situation. I told him things were being handled."

"Were they?" Camilla asked carefully. "Handled?"

Lorenzo finally looked up at her, his expression guarded in the way it always was when he suspected she was steering toward something.

"What do you want, Camilla?"

She’d learned, over thirty years, exactly how to answer that question.

"I want to talk about Isabella," she said. "Not as her mother pleading for mercy. As your wife, thinking about what’s best for this family’s position."

That got his attention. Lorenzo set down his pen.

"Go on."

"You want her to repair the alliance with Dimitri," Camilla said. "I understand why. I even agree the alliance matters. But Lorenzo i want you to think about the timing. She just survived a major blow. She’s thin, she’s not sleeping, half of Rome already knows she was involved with the man who is at war with her betrothed. If you send her to Dimitri now, in this state, what does he see?"

Lorenzo’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t interrupt.

"He sees a woman who looks broken," Camilla continued. "A liability, not an asset. And Dimitri Valentino is not a sentimental man. He will not reconsider a woman out of pity. If anything, seeing her fragile like this confirms every reason he already had for ending things with her in the first place."

"So what do you suggest?" Lorenzo asked, his voice still tight but listening now. "That we simply wait? While every family in Italy watches us do nothing?"

"I suggest we control the narrative instead of reacting to it," Camilla said. "Let it be known that Isabella is recovering privately, on her family’s insistence, before any further steps are taken. That’s not weakness, Lorenzo. That’s a father protecting his daughter’s reputation and value. It says the Russo family has standards. It says we don’t hand our daughter over looking like a casualty of someone else’s war."

Lorenzo studied her for a long moment. This was the part of their marriage Camilla had built carefully over decades, the part where he actually heard her, because she’d learned never to challenge his authority directly, only to hand him reasoning that let him arrive at her conclusion while believing it was his own.

"And how long is this recovery period supposed to last?" he asked.

"As long as it takes for her to actually look like an asset again," Camilla said. "Weeks. Perhaps a couple of months. Not forever, Lorenzo. I’m not asking you to abandon the alliance. I’m asking you not to rush a wounded animal in front of a man who has no patience for weakness."

Lorenzo was quiet, turning his cold coffee cup slowly on its saucer.

"You’ve always known how to make me see things your way," he said, though there was no real anger in it, more a grudging, familiar respect.

"I’ve always known how to see things clearly," Camilla corrected gently. "You built this family’s power through patience and timing, Lorenzo. This is no different. Don’t let panic over what people are saying make you move faster than is smart."

"And if I wait, and Dimitri marries the American permanently in the meantime? What then?"

Camilla had already thought about this. "Then we adjust the alliance to something else. A business partnership instead of a marriage. Another connection. You have other cards to play besides your daughter, Lorenzo. You always have. But you can’t play any of them well if Isabella walks into a room looking like she’s already lost."

Lorenzo exhaled slowly, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

"Two months," he finally said. "She has two months to recover, to compose herself, to become someone worth presenting again. After that, I expect her to actively work toward repairing what she damaged. I won’t wait indefinitely, Camilla. Not even for you."

"Two months is enough," Camilla said, relief moving through her chest even as she kept her expression neutral. "Thank you."

"Don’t thank me," Lorenzo said, echoing the words Camilla herself had used with Isabella the night before, though he had no way of knowing that. "This isn’t mercy. It’s strategy. Remember that when you go tell her."

Camilla nodded and rose from her seat.

"One more thing," Lorenzo said, before she could leave.

She turned back.

"Whatever she said last night, about not wanting Dimitri, that changes nothing about what she owes this family," he said. "I don’t care what her heart wants, Camilla. She’s a Russo. Her wants have never been the priority, and they aren’t going to start being the priority now."

Camilla held his gaze for a moment, something cool and unreadable in her own eyes.

"I understand, Lorenzo," she said. "I’ll make sure she understands too."

But as she walked back into the house, Camilla thought about the tears on her daughter’s face the night before, about the small broken confession of wanting to be chosen, wanting to be loved instead of used. And she thought about her own thirty years of learning to bend Lorenzo’s will without ever once being able to bend it toward what she actually wanted for herself.

She had bought Isabella time.

She hadn’t bought her freedom.

And Camilla wasn’t sure, walking up the stairs toward her daughter’s room, whether those two months would be enough to find a way to buy her that too.